


Chameleon White

by AndreyaHalms



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Closure, Conversations, M/M, Sort Of, Time Travel Fix-It, domestic stuff, it's not kidnapping if it's consensual, non-explicit chicken farming
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:48:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27619280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreyaHalms/pseuds/AndreyaHalms
Summary: “Oh,” Hashirama says, rubbing his face. “The hallucinations are new.”“I'm not a hallucination,” Madara drawls. “Also, you’re getting kidnapped.”“Kidnapped?” Hashirama asks, bewildered.(Or, the one where Madara returns from the dead and whisks a struggling Hashirama away to his cottage by the sea.)
Relationships: Senju Hashirama & Uchiha Madara, Senju Hashirama/Uchiha Madara
Comments: 22
Kudos: 228
Collections: wwwwwww





	Chameleon White

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, thanks for clicking! This was supposed to be self-indulgent rambling but then turned into...~10k words of whatever this is.
> 
> Warnings: Allusions to mental instability (vague because it's from Hashi's POV), but people do get better.

**1\. Transience**

“Oh,” Hashirama says, rubbing his face. “The hallucinations are new.”

“I'm not a hallucination,” Madara drawls. “Also, you’re getting kidnapped.”

“Kidnapped?” Hashirama asks, bewildered. “Me?”

Madara slaps a seal on the top of his head that sinks through his hair, into his scalp and through his chakra pathways. It feels a little like someone has cracked an egg on his head, and— oh. So that’s what it does.

Hashirama grabs some snacks and a bottle of water before following Madara out.

***

They head southwards, towards the coast, and after a day’s travel, end up in a fishing village by the Fire Sea around midnight. Madara leads him to a tiny, windswept cottage on a cliff overlooking the sea. It has a chicken coop, a vegetable garden and a wooden fence. Wood-and-metal windchimes clang merrily over the front door.

Hashirama suppresses a yawn. Hokage duties have been particularly gruelling lately, and having all of his chakra sealed away for the first time in his life is simply weird. The world seems so much smaller and larger all at once. Madara’s sealed away all of his own chakra too, which was probably why Hashirama (and everybody else in Konoha) hadn’t detected him earlier.

“Nice house,” Hashirama says, looking around the bedroom. Not that he can see much. The night is dark and the candles unlit.

“I know,” Madara replies, shucking off his travelling cloak and slipping into the lone bed. “Remind me to fix the roof before the monsoons hit, will you?”

Hashirama isn’t very sure what to say to that, so he latches on to the first superficial thing his brain throws at him.

“Going to make me sleep on the floor? Honestly, Madara, I’m supposed to be your _guest.”_

“Victim,” Madara corrects. “Besides, _I_ am not going to take the floor. The cold makes my knees ache.”

“You haven’t laid out a mat for me, either.”

“I haven’t.”

“There’s only one bed.”

“I noticed.”

“Er, I’m not sure if...we’re on the same wavelength?”

There’s a few moments of silence.

Madara sighs heavily. “Just get in the bed, Hashirama.”

Hashirama gets in the bed, careful to maintain a respectable distance between them. It results in half of him being halfway to the floor.

Madara sighs again, like Hashirama’s being dense, and pulls what feels like a patchwork quilt over them. He turns to his side and scoots back a bit to widen the gap between them. Then, he firmly tugs Hashirama closer so that he’s fully on the bed, and slides an arm around to cup the back of Hashirama’s head, so that they are, without a doubt, snuggling. Cuddling, even.

Madara’s thinner than he remembers, but he’s still solid and warm and comfortable. Hashirama drapes his arm over Madara’s waist, tucks his face under Madara’s chin and tries to ignore the tears prickling behind his eyelids.

***

Hashirama jolts awake the next morning, heart hammering frantically in his chest.

For a horrible, terrible moment, he’s convinced that it had all been a dream — coming back home from his office, finding Madara lounging in his living room, getting his chakra sealed and then being whisked away. But Hashirama’s still here, lying on a slightly creaky bed underneath an extremely modest roof. Sunlight spills through the window in bright golden stripes. He can hear the clucking of chickens outside and beyond that, the dull, rhythmic roar of the sea.

He takes a deep breath and gets up. The sounds and smells of frying lead him to the small kitchen-and-living/dining-room, where Madara’s flipping some eggs in an iron pan.

“Good morning,” Hashirama says carefully.

“Huh? Oh, morning. Slept well?”

It’s the best sleep he’s had in months. “Yes.”

“Good.”

Well, it’s best to get to business. “I thought I killed you.”

“Oh, you did,” Madara assures, still focused on the eggs. “For a while, anyway.”

“How— Wait.” Hashirama squints. “Tobi took your body. You’re not one of his weird experiments, are you?”

Madara snorts. He half turns, tucking the hair that always hangs over the right side of his face behind his ear and taps underneath his eye. Hashirama hadn’t noticed it yesterday, but now he realizes that Madara’s right eye is an opaque, opaline white.

“Ah,” Hashirama says. Based on his understanding of the Sharingan, he hazards a guess. “Genjutsu?”

“Hm. On reality itself. Then I crawled out of your brother’s sorry excuse of a morgue and left a clone behind, which, unsurprisingly, the imbecile hasn’t discovered yet.”

“Wow,” Hashirama says, at a loss for words. He catches the knife that’s sent flying at his face just before it can take out his nose.

“If you want to eat,” Madara says, turning back to the stove, apparently done with the conversation about his murder and subsequent resurrection, “make yourself useful.”

Hashirama looks at the knife in his hand and then at Madara’s unprotected back. He’s wearing an apron and his hair is still tucked behind his right ear. Bundles of dried herbs hang by the kitchen window, fragrant and earthy, swaying gently in the sea breeze. The sky is an impossible, surreal blue outside.

Hashirama swallows and slaps on a winning smile. “How can I help?”

***

As a rule, anything involving Madara Uchiha has never really been easy, especially for Hashirama Senju. So, he waits and waits for the other shoe to inevitably drop.

It doesn’t. Not yet, at any rate. They make breakfast and eat breakfast in silence, letting the sound of the sea and birds wash over them. The table is small and there’s only one chair, which Hashirama takes when offered.

_Why did you bring me here,_ he wants to ask, but the words refuse to come out in the face of Madara’s casual nonchalance.

_(Why did I follow you,_ he doesn’t ask, because he already knows the answer to that.)

Madara is thin, but not unhealthily so. He’s just lost a lot of his muscle mass, but there’s an easiness to his movements, a sort of a quiet peace in the lines on his face that hadn’t been there earlier.

Suddenly, a tsunami of pure, unadulterated jealousy slams through Hashirama, drowning out everything else. With the jealousy comes intense bitterness, about how _well_ Madara seems to have been doing, while Hashirama has been wasting away the last four years trying to nurture a dream that was only ever half his.

Distantly, he hears wood creak. Something snaps.

“Relax,” Madara murmurs. He takes Hashirama’s wrist and gently pries the splintered chopsticks out of his fingers. “Relax.”

“Oh.” Hashirama's breathing is shallow and he concentrates on Madara's hands. They've always been unnaturally soft for a shinobi, because of his gloves, and they’re even softer now as he runs his fingers over Hashirama’s knuckles, back and forth. Whether deliberately or absently, Hashirama doesn’t know, but the contact eases some of the ugliness coiled in his chest. “Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Hashirama uses his fingers to finish the rest of his mixed rice, something which he finds inexplicably funny. They do the dishes and Madara tells him about the little village at the base of the cliff where they can get replacement chopsticks and anything else Hashirama might need.

“And we’re getting new clothes for you,” Madara declares in a tone brooking no argument. “People will think you’re an asshole if you walk around dressed like that.”

Hashirama blinks down at his clan’s light coloured hakama and kimono shirt ensemble, and feels mildly offended. “What’s wrong with this?”

“You’re amongst civilians now, Senju. Gotta dress and look like one." He gives him a once-over. "You should get a haircut too.”

“Madara,” Hashirama says seriously. “I’ll cut mine if you cut yours, okay?”

Madara objects to that very loudly. Hashirama objects to his objections even louder, and the heated argument about personal hygiene they devolve into distracts him from the ugly jealousy in his chest. 

***

“I have work,” Madara grunts sometime in the afternoon. He disappears, leaving Hashirama alone in the cottage and officially outs himself as the worst kidnapper ever. Hashirama decides to play the good victim and stay still.

An hour or so later, he starts feeling tired again now that he doesn’t have his chakra to fall back upon to keep him up.

He tries to take a nap. It doesn’t work out very well, so he goes out to check on the chickens instead. A scruffy mongrel wanders by and growls at Hashirama when he tries to go near it. He doesn’t step out of the confines of the fence demarcating the property. 

Madara returns a little after sunset with a new pillow, two sets of clothes and a pair of chopsticks. He smells faintly of blood, and then of soap once he takes a bath.

They huddle together in the same bed under the same patchwork quilt again. Madara holds him and pets hair and gently coaxes him to sleep.

***

“Do your chickens have names?” Hashirama asks, helping Madara collect eggs in a basket.

“There are twenty of them. Do you think I have the patience to give them names?”

Hashirama grins. “So, that’s a yes, then.”

“Last time I named something, I distinctly remember _someone_ judging me to hell and back.”

“Hey! We still went with Konohagakure, didn’t we?”

Madara’s lip curls. “And we all saw how that turned out.” There’s no malice in his tone, only sharp amusement, which is vaguely unsettling. He points at three chickens, seemingly at random. “That’s Obito, Gai, Naruto. You can name the rest whatever, I don’t care.”

“Oh,” Hashirama straightens. “I saw a dog too, a few days back? I wanted to pet it, but it tried to bite me and ran off.”

“Ah, that’s Sasuke. Don’t worry. He hates everyone, but still keeps coming back for some reason. Must be the food.”

"Must be the food," Hashirama agrees.

***

Madara goes to “work” a couple of times a week and always comes back smelling vaguely of blood and dead flesh. After returning, he always heats water on his stove and soaks in a wooden tub in the bathroom to wash the stench off.

Hashirama eventually starts keeping the water ready. He crushes some of the dried lavender and lemongrass hanging by the kitchen window and adds it to Madara’s bath, feeling inordinately proud of how the fragrance curls through the room.

“I’m not a damn soup, you idiot,” Madara mutters, even though he had looked pleasantly surprised for a moment there.

“Don’t be like that,” Hashirama returns, cheerfully insincere. “I’m sure you’ll taste good, no matter the recipe.”

The bathroom door is always open (it doesn’t really have a lock in the first place) for conversation. Hashirama doesn't think Madara would mind terribly if he followed him inside to chat instead of yelling at each other from across the cottage, but he’s also not sure if he himself will ever be ready to see Madara shirtless again.

Every night, Hashirama presses his face to Madara’s thin but solid chest and tangles their legs together. There's nothing remotely sexual about it.

In the warmth and coziness of the dark, he listens to Madara’s heart beat, steady and unrelentingly strong. If Madara notices the occasional sobs, he is kind enough to not say anything.

***

Sometimes, Hashirama wakes up in the middle of the night, adrenaline surging and feeling lost and disoriented. Times like those, he ends up watching Madara sleep. Madara looks peaceful. Too peaceful, just like he had when he’d lain dead at Hashirama’s feet in the rain.

Even though he can feel his heart beating, Hashirama puts a trembling hand under Madara’s nose and concentrates on the periodic exhalations of warm air till his anxiety abates.

Madara doesn’t say anything the first time he catches him doing it.

“Go back to sleep,” he grumbles the second time.

“If you don’t stop being creepy, I’m kicking you off the bed,” he threatens the third time, and follows through with it the fourth time.

Hashirama never mistakes a sleeping Madara for a corpse again.

***

Turns out, Madara is violently, terrifyingly possessive about his sleep. It's a little entertaining, if Hashirama’s being honest.

***

An indeterminable number of weeks later, as he’s lazing on a sunny patch in the vegetable garden with a book on chicken farming on his face, Hashirama comes to the realization that somehow, he’s gotten used to the idyllic domesticity of it all.

“Oi.” Madara pokes him sharply in the side with his foot, yanking him out of his epiphany. He’s wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat to protect his blind eye from the summer sun. “I’m redoing the bean trellises. You said you had opinions on the spacing.”

Hashirama smiles and gets up. His joints feel sun-warmed and loose. A bee zips by. The grass is soft and the sea a tranquil turquoise.

Maybe it’s real. Maybe it’s not. Maybe he finally did fall into that overexhaustion-induced coma Tobirama’s always been warning him about, and these idle, halcyon days are his brain’s attempts at giving him some peace as he lies dying.

Whatever it is, it’s nice. He’ll take it.

* * *

**2\. Ascendant**

“So,” Madara says one day. “What do you even do when I’m not here? Apart from chores, I mean.”

“Hm? Nothing much. Oh! I made some progress with Sasuke. He lets me pet him now. Not bad, right?”

“Don’t you...go exploring?”

“No, not really. Why, do you want to go somewhere?”

“Do you?”

“I mean, I don’t really mind either way. We need to fix the roof, by the way, before the monsoons hit.”

Madara gives him a long, inscrutable look. “Do you want to go check out the village?”

“You mean Konoha?”

“I mean Biwa.” Madara jabs a thumb over his shoulder, indicating Biwa’s general direction. “The civilian settlement we overlook.”

Hashirama perks up and says, “Sure,” but even then, there’s a swell of unease in the pit of his stomach.

***

Because, what if it really is an illusion? What if it all dispels the moment he steps out of the property? What if— He can’t— He _won’t_ lose Madara again.

He remembers how the other man always smells of death whenever he returns from the village. Maybe death awaits Hashirama on the other side of the wooden fence too. The Pure Lands, where everyone he’s ever lost is waiting for him, where he’ll wait for those he’ll have to leave behind.

But Madara’s soul had never been given a chance to ascend. Nobody had fought too hard to carry out the traitor’s last rites, to cleanse his soul of the earthly sins of its body. They had even— _Hashirama_ had even allowed Tobirama to _desecrate—_

“Come _on,”_ Madara groans impatiently, yanking at the back of Hashirama’s scratchy tunic. “The door is locked. The windows are closed. Nobody’s going to come all the way up here to steal anything. I don't even have anything worth stealing, holy shit.”

“Yes, alright, let me check the chicken yard—”

“The poultry will be fine, Hashirama. _God.”_

Madara holds out his hand, like a bridge. Hashirama takes a leap of faith.

***

Biwa, as Madara informs him on their trek down, is a small village sited around a natural harbour and boasts a modest population of around eighty. There’s some amount of trade involved with other villages inland and further down the coast, but as a whole, they are largely self-sustaining.

“Nice, friendly folk,” Madara says unprompted. “Mostly mind their own business and don’t ask any uncomfortable questions.”

They walk down the main road and Madara keeps up a steady stream of commentary about the people and places they encounter.

“That’s Yua. Her grandmother makes those dango you like so much.”

Or,

“Stay away from Kenji, he’s an incorrigible flirt. Can control a boat like nobody else, though. If I didn’t know better, I would have suspected a water or wind affinity.”

They walk side-by-side, their arms bumping. Madara draws his attention to things with a touch to the elbow or a hand on the small of his back, and, even a strangely comforting kick to the ankle that Hashirama skips out of the way of.

The physical contact is almost constant, like it is back at the cottage. It prevents Hashirama from feeling as anxious and unmoored as he’d felt before leaving the house.

Somewhere down the leisurely meander through the village, they end up with their fingers threaded together. Hashirama’s too engrossed in whatever Madara is saying to notice when it happens, but when he eventually does, he squeezes Madara’s hand, his heart swelling.

***

“This,” Madara gestures grandly at the butcher’s shop, with the air of one unveiling a commemorative statue. Hashirama looks suitably impressed. “This is where I work.”

The pink-haired young man manning the counter perks up when he sees Madara.

“You’re late,” the boy announces. “I was starting to think you’d make me stand here the whole day. Oh, hullo,” he tells Hashirama with an easy smile. “I’m Itsuki. You must be the friend he always keeps talking about.”

Hashirama laughs. “I suppose so. You can call me Ha—”

“Ah!” Itsuki holds up his hands. “I don’t want to know.”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, he didn’t tell you?” Itsuki grins, looking delighted. “This guy here,” he indicates towards Madara with a gloved hand, “he’s been living with us for, what, three years? But he refuses to give us his name. Namonai, we call him.”

“Keeps the mystery alive,” Madara says drily from the side.

“Damn right, it does!” Itsuki says, as if it’s the most amazing thing he’s ever come across. His eyes shine. “It definitely gives us something to talk about! I’d peg him as shinobi, but he’s _terrible_ at ninjutsu and he hates shinobi in general, so.”

“I don’t _hate_ shinobi.”

“Oh ho! You should hear yourself talk when you’re down a bottle, my friend.”

“Only about how their lifestyle is unsustainable.” It sounds like an old argument.

“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, with scars like that, he’s definitely seen violence. You should see how quickly he can disembowel a pig! So, I'm thinking ex-samurai? Disgraced ex-samurai? Escaped convict? Who knows! Anyway,” he peers at Hashirama, “you’ve got the vaguely unhinged eyes of a warrior too, so—”

“Itsuki,” Madara interrupts loudly. “Don’t you have to see your mother?”

“Ah, shit,” Itsuki curses, withdrawing. He switches attention from Hashirama to Madara. “I’ll be off, then. There’s this giant tuna waiting for you in the freezer. I’ve taken out the gills. Yao asked me to ask you to do your thing and put it on some ice; there’s a shipment going to Kara this evening.”

And with that, Itsuki throws off his apron with more flourish than necessary and flounces off to the back of the shop, presumably to leave through the back door.

“Nice kid,” Hashirama comments, biting back a smile. “Seems really fond of you.”

“That’s my curse,” Madara says, hauling out the largest fish Hashirama has ever seen. “No matter where I go, there’ll always be at least one idiot that takes an unnatural liking to me.”

“You wound me, Namonai. _Wound.”_

The fish is slightly taller than Hashirama and twice as broad. Madara gives him a pair of gloves that’s made of the same mesh material as shinobi under armour and Itsuki’s discarded apron. Together, they heft it onto the counter.

“I should have guessed sooner you work at the butchers’,” Hashirama confesses as Madara starts hacking away at the tail.

“I thought you knew, seeing how you keep soaking me in vegetable stock whenever I come back smelling of entrails.”

Hashirama gives him a significant look.

“What,” Madara says.

“How do I put it...I thought the entrails were of a human nature.”

_Sometimes I thought they’re yours,_ he doesn’t say.

“Oh, I’m over killing people,” Madara says flippantly. “But there is a certain joy in being elbow-deep in blood and gore, so here I am.”

“So you were serious when you said that being a shinobi is unsustainable.”

“You lot wax poetic about peace and harmony but still kill to protect your own interests. How is that sustainable? The sheer inconsistency between thought and action is enough to drive anyone crazy.”

Hashirama winces. The movement clearly doesn’t go unnoticed by Madara, but he chooses not to comment.

_(If anyone dares to destroy the peace in Konoha,_ Hashirama had said with burning conviction, blood and rain and heartbreak everywhere, _I won’t hesitate to strike them down._

_You've changed,_ Madara had croaked, disappointment outweighing everything else.)

“You are a shinobi too,” Hashirama says quietly.

“I _was,_ yes. And it drove me crazy, didn’t it?”

“So, what—” Maybe it’s not the right time or place to have this conversation, but he has to know. “What changed now?”

Madara looks at him, one eye clouded and blind, and the other dark. Intense. “Perspective, mostly.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Yet, that is all you’ll get for now. If you want something to do, you can start by cleaning the storage room.”

Hashirama takes it as the escape that is. “Do I get paid for my labour?” He jokes.

Madara’s lip curls. “Only if you accept alcohol.”

***

Madara looks more at ease (more at home) in Biwa, with its lopsided roofs and houses on stilts, than he ever did in Konoha. He gets a few nods when they enter the bar, the acknowledgement and familiarity clear in the villagers’ faces.

Their easy acceptance of Madara makes Hashirama feel...odd.

He’s happy for Madara, of course he is, but the happiness is twisted up in the same unbidden bitterness that clouds his mind sometimes when he realises how beautifully Madara’s thriving in this little life he’s made for himself. Which, in turn, makes Hashirama feel absolutely horrible because he loves Madara and he also _hates_ him, but maybe not as much as he despises himself for failing—

“The shochu goes well with the crispy sweet potatoes,” Madara says unprompted, pressing ever-so-lightly against Hashirama. He pats Hashirama’s knee under the counter once, and keeps his hand there. Warm. Solid. Distracting.

Hashirama exhales.

“May I challenge you to a drinking contest?” He asks Madara solemnly.

“I don’t have the _finances_ for a drinking contest,” Madara returns immediately.

“But you promised you’d pay me for my labour!”

“I don’t see a legal contract.”

“See, there’s this old-fashioned thing called trust…”

“A drinking contest is beyond your pay grade, anyway.”

“Sounds like something a coward would say.”

“Freeloaders don’t get to fucking speak.”

Hashirama would like to point out that there’s more to his situation than simple freeloading, but that conversation will probably shove him headfirst into another maudlin spiral. So, he says, “I’ll get a job and pay you back! Unless, of course, you’re too chicken.”

“You need to get way more creative if you want to goad me.”

Hashirama nods. “Well, I suppose there’s no fun in competing if you’ll lose to me anyway.” Then, the coup de grace. “Like always.”

Madara’s eyebrows twitch, and Hashirama knows he’s already won.

***

He was wrong. He’s lost. He’s lost miserably.

“I’m gonna throw up,” Hashirama says, voice faint.

“Shit,” Madara hisses, and the next thing Hashirama knows that he’s being unceremoniously hauled out of the izakaya by the back of his collar, which really doesn’t do anything nice for his roiling stomach.

He throws up outside under the glowing red paper lanterns. Madara holds his hair back and makes him sit on the ground before disappearing back into the bar. He puts his head between his knees and breathes in the sea-salted air. Someone hands him a glass of water, which he accepts gratefully.

Madara returns after what feels like hours. Days, even. “Can you stand?”

“Not without help,” Hashirama admits pitifully.

“Hm. So—”

“Extenuating circumstances,” Hashirama mutters before he can finish.

“—you lost,” Madara finishes anyway. Then, childishly smug, he adds, “I won.”

“Extenuating circumstances,” Hashirama repeats. “You took away my mokuton. I wasn’t prepared.”

“Guess you’re pretty mediocre without your chakra, huh?”

“I’m pretty mediocre without you,” Hashirama says honestly.

“Walked right into that one,” Madara mutters, whether referring to himself or to Hashirama, the latter doesn’t know. “C’mon. Up you get.”

Hashirama up-you-gets with Madara’s help. Both of them sway at the movement.

“Hah! You’re drunk too.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that I still won.”

Hashirama taps the cloth bag hanging from Madara’s wrist. “What’s this?”

“Breakfast. Neither of us will be in a position to cook anything in the morning.”

“You’re a godsend,” Hashirama whispers fervently. “A godsend.”

The walk back to their cottage on the cliff is much slower than it had been on the way down, mostly to avoid broken ankles. The cool night breeze clears Hashirama’s mind just enough that he doesn’t need to lean on Madara anymore, but they still hold hands. Everything is edged in a faint, ethereal silver glow, and Hashirama is drunk and giddy with it, with everything. He can’t remember the last time he felt this free.

Madara’s craning his neck, trying to look at the sea. His hand pulls Hashirama into his orbit. “We get bioluminescent plankton around this time of the year. Dunno why they’re not here _yet,_ but I’ll take you to see when—”

Hashirama has a sudden revelation, maybe a little too late. “You’re always touching me.” 

Madara turns to look at him. “Is that a problem?”

“No, I was just curious.”

“Ah.” Madara fishes out a cigarette from the cloth bag. Before, he would have used his katon to light it, but now he takes the assistance of a matchstick. He’s halfway through the cigarette when Hashirama speaks again.

“I really like it when you touch me.”

Madara smiles a little bit. “You’re pissed out of your mind.”

“Please,” Hashirama says loftily. “Facts don’t depend on one’s degree of inebriation.”

Madara stubs the cigarette on the ground and puts the filter back in the bag. The silence between them is comfortable, companionable. Hashirama looks forward to getting back and sleeping wrapped in and around Madara.

“Sometimes,” Madara says eventually. “You look like— heh. You look like someone died. Physical contact makes you look less pathet—” He cuts himself off. “No, anxious. It makes you look less anxious.” He shrugs, shoulders loose. "Anxiety doesn't look good on anyone, least of all on you. If I can make it better for you, then— Hashirama, if you don't stop crying, I’m throwing you off this path.”

“I’m not crying,” Hashirama sobs.

They stop for a while to rest at a grassy little patch that’s edged by wildflowers. Madara sits down and looks at the sky. Hashirama lies down and looks at Madara looking at the sky. Everything is still spinning pleasantly and Madara’s slightly parted lips look kind of dry.

Maybe his own lips are dry too. Hashirama licks them experimentally and feels uneven dead skin. He doesn’t think he’s ever had chapped lips like normal people before today.

He wonders...

The thought is out of his mouth as soon as it forms in his head. “Can I kiss you?”

Madara glances down at him and makes a disgusted face. “I’m not kissing you. You definitely taste of vomit.”

“And you of smoke. Come on, they’ll cancel each other out.”

“More likely they'll just come together to form something even more revolting.”

"We won't know 'til we try, right? Where's your sense of adventure?"

"Dead and nonexistent."

“Madara,” Hashirama says and closes his eyes. He’s aware he has been smiling for a while now, and even though his face hurts, he has no intention of stopping. “Please stop being difficult and kiss me before I pass out.”

There’s an exhale of warm air on his face that smells of burnt tobacco and cheap booze. He cracks open his eyelids to see Madara leaning over him, his pale face and wild hair blocking out the starry sky. His face had been even paler when he’d been killed.

“You drive a hard bargain, Senju,” Madara murmurs, voice impossibly soft, tone equal parts wistful and melancholic.

Hashirama twists a finger around the stalk of a wildflower to pluck it out. He tucks it behind Madara’s ear and touches his thick, endearingly tangled hair. “I’m clearly the victim in this situation.”

Madara crawls over Hashirama. Hashirama cups his face and guides him down so that their foreheads touch and they're simply existing, breathing in each other.

"I missed you, my love," Hashirama says, voice barely a whisper. "So much."

Madara’s gaze is open and searching. When he finally finds whatever he’d been looking for, he dips down and threads his fingers in Hashirama’s hair and slowly, gently, with great care, kisses him under the open blanket of stars.

***

Hashirama wakes up just as the sky begins to lighten and the birds start making unpleasant noises. Madara’s head is resting on his chest, and the rest of him clings to Hashirama like a giant, prickly limpet.

“Madara,” he whispers. “Wake up. We need to get back.”

Madara groans unhappily but rolls up to his feet. There’s grass and burr sticking all over his hair and clothes.

“Fuck,” Madara grunts, clutching his head. “I’m getting too old for this.” The flower that had been tucked behind his ear is now tangled in his hair.

Hashirama leaps up to his feet to prove that _he_ is as young and spry as ever, and immediately regrets it.

“I think I’m still drunk,” he announces miserably as everything throbs. “Don’t let me drink again, please.”

Madara laughs and kisses him on the cheek and then on his mouth.

Well. That answers that question, then.

They make it back to the cottage just as the sun begins to break over the horizon. The poultry is fine and nobody has broken in to take anything. Everything is just as they had left it. Hashirama feels a little silly for being so worried about nothing and almost backing out from what turned out to be a truly lovely outing.

He makes sure that the bedroom curtains are drawn tight while Madara gets water from the kitchen. He waits under the quaint little patchwork quilt till Madara returns, and closes his eyes only after his head is snugly tucked under Madara’s chin.

The food that was supposed to be their breakfast turns out to be their lunch. It’s become cold and hard and dry by the time they get to it, but it’s still absolutely perfect.

***

True to his word, Hashirama goes down to Biwa to look for work.

He mostly hangs out with Madara at the butcher’s and does odd jobs for whoever needs an extra pair of hands and an able body. He gets paid less in currency and more in the form of a complicated network of transferable favours that the villagers owe each other. He doesn’t really understand the technicalities, but Madara asks him to trust the system and go with the flow, and so he does.

Sometimes he gets paid in kind— a pouch of herbs or seeds for their vegetable patch, a small bottle of sake (his attempts at going sober had been gamely, but unfortunately short-lived) or a box of tempura (Madara’s doing, he suspects fondly). It’s okay, they share everything anyway.

Nobody asks his name, and the joy of doing menial tasks that lack the grand burdens of responsibility and duty is small, but significant.

***

Hashirama isn’t sure what the month is, but he reckons that the monsoons can’t be too far behind. Madara keeps expertly deflecting all discussions related to roof-fixing, so Hashirama takes it upon himself to inventory the backyard shed for roofing material.

He’s rummaging through gardening and poultry implements, firewood and other assorted knick-knacks that have either come with the shed or display a surprising hoarding tendency on Madara’s side when he stumbles across the incongruous iron box. He can’t tell what exactly about it is so jarring, but the longer he looks at it, the uneasier he feels.

Hashirama glances over his shoulder once, unlatches the box, and pops the lid open.

The inside of the box is lined with arrays of blood seals, stacked upon one another. A sealed spherical glass flask sits in the centre of the box, holding a thick, roiling black mass in its swollen belly.

As if in a trance, Hashirama lifts the flask out. It’s much heavier than it looks.

A pale yellow eye blinks open, almost luminous in the black sludge, followed by another. A too-wide mouth stretches in a grotesque smile that displays too many too-sharp teeth.

An unnatural breeze stirs the dust and cobwebs in the shed. There’s a whisper in the back of his mind. A familiar and comforting caress and an indisputable part of him, not unlike the ancient, resonant thrum of nature chakra that had been a part of him since the day he had come out of his mother’s womb.

_Protect… Protect Konoha…_

“Hashirama.”

Hashirama startles, almost dropping the flask. Madara’s standing by the door of the shed, face as white as a corpse.

_Don’t forget yourself, Hashirama Senju._

“Hashirama,” Madara says. There’s naked terror in his eyes. “Love,” the endearment sounds foreign and fake coming from his mouth, out of sync with the movement of his lips, “I need you to put that down.”

“I— What…”

_Remember who you are._

“Hashirama, please.”

_Remember who_ **_he_ ** _is, what he did._

That’s Madara. Madara’s speaking. Why is he so far away? Maybe he’ll come closer if Hashirama opens—

_Remember what he made you_ **_do_ ** _._

“Hashirama!” Madara snaps, and then Madara is wrenching the flask out of his hands, slamming the awful iron box shut and roughly dragging him away from the dark and into the sunlight.

Everything is still hazy and unfocused. With a start, he realises that he’s shivering uncontrollably, even though the sun is shining directly overhead. It’s bright, everything is too bright, but he’s still so cold and his teeth won’t stop chattering even though Madara’s hugging him so tightly that it’s almost painful—

Hashirama bundles his hands into Madara’s shirt and collapses to his knees, bringing the both of them down.

“It’s all right,” Madara breathes. He’s trembling too. “I got you. It’s alright. You’re alright.”

“What was that?”

He takes a few pensive moments before saying, “Something worse than all the tailed beasts put together.”

Hashirama stares. “Why do you have it?”

“Because I’m the only one who knows—” Madara’s face shutters when he realises what Hashirama’s real question is. “I’m not going to attack Konoha with it. I told you, I’m past that.”

_What changed?_

“I trust you.” It’s the truth, as damning as that is. “I’m sorry for asking.”

“It doesn’t matter. But I need you to promise me you won’t go near the thing again. For my sake, if not yours.”

“I promise,” he says. Then, hating how small his voice sounds, he adds, “I’m still very cold.”

“Get up. I’ll make you some tea. It’ll help.”

“With ginger and honey?”

“If that’s what you want.”

“Yes.” He kisses Madara. “But only if you’re the one making it for me.”

They never talk about the entity in the flask again.

***

The monsoons come.

“I hate this,” Madara states, pouring out one of the many buckets and containers strategically placed underneath the leaking spots in the roof.

“Don’t look at me,” Hashirama says primly, blowing on his soup. He refuses to help, even as their kitchen starts to flood. “I’ve been reminding you to fix the roof since the day I came here.”

***

Sex with Madara...before had always been a trying, mercurial thing: all bitten lips and bruises and blood. Towards the end, more often than not, the aftermath would leave Hashirama feeling equal parts miserable, angry and (as much as he hates to think of it like that) used.

Now, well.

“We don’t have to do this, you know,” Madara offers now. “I can keep my shirt on.”

“No,” Hashirama says firmly. “We’re doing this. I want to see you. All of you.”

Madara is pliant as Hashirama carefully takes off his shirt. In the glow of the moon, Madara’s torso is pale and solid and littered with scars — most familiar, some not — but the twisted mess of poorly-healed tissue Hashirama had imagined over his heart is not there.

He runs his fingers over the smooth skin on Madara’s chest. It breaks out in goosebumps under his touch. He traces the curve of his ribs around his side to his back, below his shoulder blade, where he’d driven his sword in.

“There’s nothing here,” he says, unable to keep the wonder out of his voice. He presses his hand over his chest again, just to make sure. “Can every Sharingan do this?”

“Only the Mangekyou.”

“Lucky me you have it, then,” Hashirama says, and as shallow and selfish as it sounds, he means it.

Madara undresses him slowly, pausing to kiss his face, his neck, his shoulders and everything else that he can reach. Hashirama lays Madara down on his back and takes his sweet time opening him up, murmuring praise about how good he looks and sounds and feels, and how much he loves him.

Madara bites his lip when Hashirama enters him. He gives Hashirama’s hair a sharp tug, and Hashirama shivers from the twin sensations of being inside Madara and having his hair pulled.

“Come on,” Madara says, wild hair everywhere. “Move.”

“Patience,” Hashirama says cheerfully. “Good things come to those who wait.”

“I’ve waited for years,” Madara counters, mismatched eyes never leaving Hashirama’s face. There's a smirk lurking in the corner of his lips. "Lifetimes."

“And you call _me_ the hopeless romantic.”

Hashirama moves languidly at first, savouring every slow inch of slide. It's less about the pleasure and more about the intimate closeness. Madara looks distinctly unimpressed, even though his skin is flushed red all the way to his nipples. When he finally picks up his pace, Madara keens and grabs at his arms, his hips, his face, like he wants to feel more of Hashirama than is physically possible, like he can’t get enough.

***

Madara won't tell him what really made him change his views on life, but there is something he still has to ask. They're lying out in the yard, with Hashirama’s head on Madara’s stomach, lazily watching the retreating rain clouds when he brings it up.

"Hey, Madara?"

"Hm?"

He seeks out Madara’s hand and threads their fingers together. "Why did you bring me here with you that day?"

"Because I knew you'd follow."

"But _why?_ It's okay if you don't want to answer."

Madara’s silent for a while. Maybe he's gathering his thoughts, maybe he doesn't want to talk about it. Hashirama doesn't particularly care. He's content either way.

"I heard about the statues," Madara says abruptly.

"What?"

"The giant statues you built of us where we fought. I heard about them, and I was curious. I went to check them out."

"Ah," Hashirama says, trying and failing not to blush. "Did you like yours?"

"I know you have a thing for commemorative stone sculptures, but that was a little too much, don't you think?"

"But did you _like_ it?"

"You put me in a fucking furisode, Hashirama. How did you even manage to get away with it?"

“Wasn’t that hard, really. People took it as a symbol of my victory over you, instead of— you know. Instead of the lovelorn symbol of sodomy I'd meant it as.”

Madara chuckles, his laugh rumbling deep in his chest. “Apart from the clothes, it is a decent likeness, I’ll give you that.”

“Mm.” Hashirama turns to his side so that he can see the sharp slope of his jaw. “My instructions were extremely specific.”

“Anyway,” Madara says, picking up where he’d left off, “I saw the statues. Then, on a whim, I decided to see how Konoha was doing. This was around two years back.”

“You were in Konoha two years back?”

“Not exactly. I went to— our cliff. You were there. You didn’t notice me, of course. You looked the same way I felt after Izuna died.” He runs his knuckles against Hashirama’s palm. “Tired. Guilty. Depressed.”

“Killing the only man you’ve ever loved tends to do that to a person,” Hashirama says mildly.

“Yet, you were going to marry that Uzumaki heiress.”

“It didn’t mean anything and you know that. It would have been purely political, for Konoha.”

“For Konoha,” Madara agrees. “I went against Izuna’s last wishes for Konoha. My clan kicked me out for Konoha. You were marrying for Konoha. You fought me for Konoha, you killed me for Konoha. You see the common thread, don’t you? Staying away from the village did wonders for my mind, so I figured you needed some distance too. And here we are.” He sighs before continuing. “Listen. About everything I did. I was completely unhinged. I had no one to help me—”

“I should have tried—”

“I had no one to help me the way I _needed_ to be helped, Hashirama. You were vastly unequipped. I wasn’t your responsibility and I wouldn’t have accepted your help anyway. I’m not going to apologise because I don't feel any real regret, and I’m not asking for your forgiveness. Your understanding, yes, but not your forgiveness.”

Does Hashirama understand? He thinks he does. Maybe. If he compares how feels _now_ against how he felt before, he realises that for all the love and support his family and the people of Konoha showered upon him, something intangible, unexplainable had always been missing. Madara somehow knows what that _something_ is, and all he’s done in the past few months is to give him just that something, bit-by-bit, with nothing but brusque sincerity.

Hashirama doesn't know where he would have ended up if Madara hadn’t turned up when he did.

He confesses, "I hated how I never gave you a funeral."

Madara reaches down to pat his head graciously. He sounds amused when he says, "Thank you for not returning my body to ash. It would have been rather inconvenient."

Who helped Madara, Hashirama wonders, when he’d been lost?

He has changed. He has changed drastically, to the extent that sometimes it feels like Hashirama’s thinking about two entirely different people. Surely, four measly years is far too less for a person as passionate as Madara to overcome a lifetime’s worth of rage and violence?

(Then again, it’s not hard to imagine a different course of life, where the awkward, easily-flustered boy by the river would grow up to be a grumpy old man tending to poultry in a cottage by the sea.)

“Is any of this real?” Hashirama whispers. "Will I wake up and find out all of this has been a dream?”

Madara barks out a startled laugh, and keeps laughing. He laughs with his whole body, so violently, that Hashirama is dislodged from the very comfortable pillow that is Madara's stomach. He’s mildly concerned that he might have broken him.

“You—” Madara chokes out, wiping away tears of mirth from his eyes. “Does it matter? Real or a dream, what’s wrong with enjoying it while it lasts?”

“Nothing wrong at all,” Hashirama says sagely into the grass, which sends Madara into another laughing fit.

* * *

**3\. Ascendant**

A short autumn starts fading into winter. The last leaves have all but fallen when Hashirama looks up to see a thin plume of black smoke in the sky.

"Pirates," Madara says, standing with his arms crossed at the edge of the cliff, face stormy. It's a familiar sight, even without his armour, gunbai and scythe. "Happens sometimes."

Horrified, Hashirama looks down at the small skirmishes breaking out along Biwa’s coast. “We have to help!”

Madara grabs his forearm, as if Hashirama was just about to jump off the cliff and land amidst the fray. “Help how, exactly? You don’t have your healing abilities. You’ve never fought without your chakra.”

Hashirama stares at him, incredulous. “Then _give_ me my chakra back, Madara. What’s wrong with you?”

“If your chakra flares, your brother will know where you are. Then I’ll have to move away from here.”

“So you’re just going to let innocent people get hurt? There won’t be a _here_ to be in if we don’t do anything.”

“Biwa has survived this long without our meddling. They will survive now.”

He can see people, indistinguishable to his eye because of the altitude, fighting with harpoons and swords. Some houses are on fire.

It would have been so easy to drive off the invaders if he had his chakra. To put out the flames, heal people and build new structures.

Avoidable suffering is what he's being made to watch.

Madara’s tight grip on his forearm suddenly feels like a shackle.

They watch blood being spilt in silence.

“There’s a difference,” Madara says suddenly. The pirate vessel is up in flames now, the tide of the fight turning in the villagers’ favour.

“What?”

“There is a difference, Hashirama, between safety and peace.” He says the words calmly, like it’s an indisputable fact. “Shinobi equate the two because they don’t know any better. But there is a difference.”

“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what it is, will you?” Hashirama murmurs, the wind and smoke snatching away his words.

“It took me a lot to figure it out.” Madara drops Hashirama’s arm. “It won’t hold the same value if someone spoon-feeds it to you.”

***

"It's not about peace or safety," Hashirama says as they help with the rebuilding efforts. "It's about responsibility to your fellow man."

Madara gives him a slightly judgemental look from the corner of his good eye, as if Hashirama’s an idiot who completely missed the point. Hashirama cheerfully ignores it; not everyone can have a death experience and then turn into some sort of a philosopher-sage overnight.

***

New Year’s springs upon them suddenly and brings with it a very important realization.

“We forgot your birthday,” Hashirama says, drowsily nuzzling Madara’s jaw. They’re under the winter blankets, where everything is nice and toasty. “Um, your original one, that is.”

“We forgot yours too.”

“Doesn’t matter. We can celebrate both of them together.”

“Oh?” Madara says. He leisurely skims his hand down Hashirama’s back and settles it on his ass, giving it a light pat. “And when will that be?”

“Today. Three birds, one stone.”

“And how, exactly, are we going to celebrate?”

“Dunno,” Hashirama says as Madara wraps his fingers around his dick, giving it an unhurried stroke. He rolls his hips. “We’ll figure something out.”

“You figure it out. I’m going back to sleep.”

“Madara,” Hashirama complains. “You just woke up. How can you go back to sleep again?”

“Watch and learn, Hashirama. Watch and learn.”

Hashirama rolls them over so that he’s kneeling over Madara, knee on either side of his hips. He keeps Madara’s wrists pinned above his head.The blanket is a warm, insulating tent all around and over them that blocks out most of the early morning light. 

“I’ll suck your dick if you help me plan,” he offers.

“Please. You’ll suck my dick either way.”

Hashirama laughs. “I’ll do the dishes. For a week.”

“I know I have my faults, but you can’t honestly think I’m that shallow.”

“I’ll do the laundry too.” He kisses Madara sweetly. “And sweep the floor.” Another kiss. “And attend to the chickens.” Another one. “I’ll be a slave to all of your dastardly domestic desires.”

Madara yawns. “See, that’s a plan. You came up with it by yourself. Congratulations. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must sleep.”

“Madara dearest, I adore you, but you’re just so horribly _mean_ sometimes.”

Madara extracts his wrists from where they’re pinned over his head and wraps his arms around Hashirama, pulling him down so that he’s fully lying on him. Hashirama ends up getting a smothering faceful of pillow and hair. Spitting out hair from his mouth, he turns his head to the side, towards Madara, so that he can breathe, and tries to nibble at his earlobe.

“I swear to God, Hashirama, I _will_ throw you off.”

“That’s okay! I’ll just take you down with me.”

“Will you— _Stop_ squirming.”

“He demands, with a smile.”

“Just because I’m happy,” Madara grumbles, decisively shutting his eyes. His lips, though, are curled in a slight smile. “Doesn’t mean I have to sacrifice my sleep. Let me have both."

***

They eventually manage to get out of bed and (after multiple meandering detours) end up in Biwa in the evening for the New Year’s festival.

The road is lined with lanterns and colourful strips of braided bamboo and paper stars and fish. The salty smell of fried batter-soaked seafood curls through the air, over the sounds of drums and string music and general happy chatter.

They share a stick of cotton candy, before Madara disappears off for his shift at the food stall.

Hashirama drifts through the festival premises, just another nameless face in the crowd. He indulges some children who beg for his help in scooping up goldfish on flimsy washi scoopers and finally ends up at the play being put on in the main square.

As he watches the lively teenagers dancing, his mind drifts. He can't help but marvel how different _he_ himself is now compared to how he’d been earlier. Being away from Madara, not touching or seeing him doesn’t make him break out in cold sweat any more. He feels settled. Calmer, more like himself. More like a leader and less like an imposter unworthy of the admiration the world insisted on shoving down his throat.

Living, breathing had been a burden not too long ago. It feels like a blessing now.

“Hullo!” Itsuki says when Hashirama wanders over to a stall selling masks and papercutting art. He spots a mask that looks a lot like it could be on an ANBU.

“Hi, Itsuki,” Hashirama smiles warmly. “I thought you’d be helping at the food stall.”

“Normally, yes. But my mom got hurt in the pirate attack, so I have to be here.” He vaguely waves in the direction of the papercuttings. The designs are intricate, lacy things made by a steady hand and a sharp knife. “She makes them at home.”

“Is she fine?”

The boy waves his hand dismissively. “She will be.”

“I’m sorry she had to get hurt.”

“Eh, it’s okay. She would have been fine, but then she took a hit meant for someone else. I guess that’s okay. The Will of Fire and all that.”

Hashirama almost chokes. “The what?”

“Haven’t you heard of it? It’s the first Hokage’s philosophy. Wait, do you know who the first Hokage is?”

“I’ve heard some things,” Hashirama says weakly.

“He’s the strongest shinobi to ever exist. _Ever._ They even call him a god, can you imagine that? I’d love to see him fight. Anyway, the Hokage believes in something called the Will of Fire. He says that the older generation must protect and fight for the younger ones, just as the people before have done for them. You live for the peace and harmony of the entire village rather than just your family. Pretty neat, huh?”

“Yes,” Hashirama says faintly. “Pretty neat. I wasn’t aware you’d have heard about it all the way here in Biwa.”

Itsuki’s eyes light up. “Why wouldn’t we? The entire world has heard of it!” He laughs. “Even if we hadn’t, the Will of Fire is a recurring theme in our mutual friend’s drunken anti-shinobi rants.”

“Oh?”

“Wait, you mean he’s never gone on at you about how awful he thinks shinobi are?”

“Well, it’s not something we really talk about.”

“Yeah, but are you honestly surprised he thinks the Will of Fire is trash? Such a concept must be the very definition of hell for him, the adorably eccentric introvert that he is.”

“Haha, you’re not wrong.”

“By the way, did you know the first Hokage’s gone missing? He just up and disappeared one day! Strange, huh?”

“Very strange,” Hashirama says awkwardly. As much as he generally enjoys chatting with the lively young man, he doesn’t want to continue talking about _this._ He diverts the conversation by pointing at a papercutting of a dragon curled under a tree. “How much is this for?”

He finds his way back to Madara — or Madara finds his way to him. A bit of both, really. Like it had been the first time by the river. Like it’s always been.

They watch the fireworks over the sea. When Hashirama beams down at Madara, he finds him looking back, eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

"What?" Hashirama laughs over the sound of pyrotechnics.

"Nothing," Madara says with a wry sort of smile, as if he's in on a joke that's escaped Hashirama. He looks away, and after a few moments, he murmurs, "Just meditating on the nature of change, is all."

***

One afternoon, days into spring, Hashirama comes across the clothes he had come here in. It’s in the cupboard, pushed carelessly to the back by the dark greys, blues and blacks he’s been wearing for the last year or so.

He pulls the light-coloured fabric of his kimono shirt out and absently runs his hand over the fine cotton. There’s a bump under his fingers and he pulls out a small scroll from the pocket in the sleeve.

It had been nothing special, he remembers now. Just a message from the Tsuchikage congratulating him on the successful conclusion of their villages’ joint security exercises.

Hashirama opens the scroll and stares at the blocky writing. The Tsuchikage would have expected a reply.

He thinks of Madara, untethered and free to live the life he wants to lead. He thinks of himself, with a fledgling world to shape, thousands of eyes to guide.

He thinks of safety and peace and responsibility. Of a shed with a secret, of standing by in learned apathy just to protect that secret.

“Oh,” he says, as it all comes crashing down. He rubs his face. “Fuck.”

***

Madara’s cross-legged on the kitchen floor, fiddling with what looks like a part of the lone, now-dismantled chair when Hashirama finds him.

“I—” He starts. Trails off.

Madara lifts his head, takes in Hashirama and what he’s wearing, and goes back to whatever he’d been doing. The seconds tick by.

“I need to leave,” Hashirama finally manages to blurt out.

“You know where the door is,” Madara says disinterestedly.

The apathy in his voice stings more than it should, considering Hashirama’s the one who'd come here with a speech, prepared to fight for his need to leave. “Is that all you’re going to say?”

“I’m not going to beg, if that’s what you want.”

“I don’t want you to beg!” Hashirama exclaims. “I just— Something, maybe? Anything is better than apathy.”

Madara looks up at that, eyes blazing. “What the fuck do you want me to say? No matter how hard I try, what I do, I will never get you to choose—” He cuts himself off, mouth an unhappy, downturned line. Anger visibly draining, he repeats, “What the fuck do you want me to say? You want to go, go.”

Hashirama suddenly hates himself for not accepting the non-confrontational escape he’d been offered. “You know I wouldn’t have decided to leave if I didn’t need to,” he tries to explain. “I _am_ grateful for everything you’ve done for me, Madara. You must know that. It’s just that— I’m sorry that we can’t — that _I_ can’t...” He trails off helplessly. 

“What are you sorry for?” Madara just looks tired now, centuries old. “You got your closure. You have your priorities, I have mine. That's just how it is.”

Hasirama hesitates. “I'd like my chakra back, please.”

“The seal is linked to your mind. Think really hard about what you really want to accomplish with your chakra, and you’ll get it back.”

“It’s that simple?”

“I'm not an idiot.” Madara gives a nasty sort of grin. “I do need an escape plan if one of your...friends find me.”

“Please don't kill my friends,” Hashirama tries to joke weakly.

“What, you’d rather I kill myself then?”

“You know that's not what I meant,” Hashirama says quietly.

“Ah, well,” Madara says, unfolding as he rises to stand. He dusts nonexistent dirt from his pants. “Might as well go on my own terms when the time comes. Did you pack everything you need?”

Madara walks him out, accompanying him till the porch. Hashirama takes his time to tell the chickens goodbye and spends some extra time letting the newly-hatched clutch of chicks run all over his feet.

His hand is on the fence gate when, from behind him, Madara speaks up.

"I lose."

Hashirama turns. “What?”

Madara's leaning against the door jamb, arms crossed and body a long, casual line. The setting sun paints the sky a blazing orange. "You asked me once why I changed. If I follow the path I was on earlier, I end up as a stepping stone for someone else's goals. Innocent children are ruined, the Uchiha get wiped out, everything goes to shit and I lose.”

Hashirama stares, uncomprehending. “What do you mean?”

“I lose, you win. Like always.” Madara smiles, a little self-deprecatory. It’s an odd look on him. “It’s degrading. I had to give up everything I thought I believed in for the sake of my pride.”

He refuses to explain any further.

Sasuke the dog runs up to accompany Hashirama on his journey down, tail wagging. He scratches the mutt behind the ears and tells him goodbye too.

On an impulse, he turns back for one final glance. Madara is still standing where he'd left him, watching him leave; a solitary figure on a solitary cliff, overlooking a village full of people he doesn't mind existing beside.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Thanks for reading! Kudos, comments, questions or any other feedback (what worked/what didn't) is always appreciated.
> 
> 2\. I know there's some unresolved stuff, but this is where I originally meant to end this. There will always be a gap between what I feel is realistic and what I want as a sap. If you're into a bittersweet/realistic ending, this is it. Because the epilogue ends on a slightly gayer note.
> 
> 3\. Also, canon!Hashirama. I’d say his flaws were the same as Gandhi’s. Prioritizing the greater good over everything else requires certain sacrifices that can be argued as selfish. Those close to you who do not believe in the same ideals as you as deeply as you tend to get screwed over. Gandhi was a great leader and I’m sure canon!Hashi was as well, but yeah. Flaws.
> 
> 4\. The monster-in-a-flask thing is a direct homage to FMAB.
> 
> 5\. [Chameleon White](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALqPeBEnkqE&ab_channel=VoidDroid) by Void Droid.


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